From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
I am a leadfoot driver, have been for decades. My wife says I could have been an Indy racer. My driving record is solidly good and I drive a well-handling sedan. To limit speeding, I set my cruise control on the highway at 10 miles above speed limit, which seems to me where about 40% of the other drivers are at (another 40% set it at 5 above, 10% maybe go exactly the speed limit, and the last 10% go even faster than I do). However, some times when I’m on a very long trip or impatient to get home, I will go as much at 15 miles over speed limit, and that’s when my conscience starts to bother me. Is this sinful? How sinful is it? What do the manuals say? I tried to find something in Prummer but there was nothing (as far as I could see).
We can start by making a distinction. There are different kinds of laws. There are laws which come from God and those which come from man. Those which are man-made laws reflect what Augustine talks about in City of God: they are, in a sense, punishment for the Fall. Also, they present to us a much lower bar except insofar as we don’t also thereby violate God’s laws. I recall from my study of St. Augustine that he finds no exception to the commandment against lying. On the other hand, I recall a debate online between the esteemed Janet Smith and … someone else, a religious I think, maybe a Dominican, about whether there are exceptions: Can one lie to a Gestapo Jew hunter about the Jews you are hiding in your attic? The answer is… yes, probably. It can be complicated, especially if your own family’s lives are on the line.
Back to speeding.
Speeding laws are sort of “one-size fits all” laws. But that’s not reality. There are times when you need to get to the hospital, for example. There are times when driving the posted limit can make you the hazard on the Interstate. Moreover, as you mention there is praxis to consider. It seems like a social convention that LEOs allow some fudging, up to a certain point (5-10 mph). Unless they don’t in Black Duck County. Then you pay a penalty. You can always challenge in traffic court and argue that your wife was having a baby (if that was true).
However, it seems that even though speeding laws seem to be one-size-fits-all laws, they seem also to be just laws, established by (in most places) legitimate authority and they seek to uphold the common good by keeping motorists, pedestrians and property safe. The spirit of speed limits is clearly for the sake of safety.
Except when it wasn’t. Do I remember correctly that once there was a 55 mph limit for the sake of saving fuel? However, in states like Montana, limits were not posted because… well… driving in Montana takes a while. The national imposed limit was certainly more honored in the breach than the observance. It seems that a law that cannot be enforced in the face of mass violation is no law at all.
Sinful and how sinful? Hard to say. All things being equal, it seems that so long as your driving doesn’t endanger the common good, giving the social conventions, some additional mph are probably not mortally sinful. Much also depends on attitude: why are you speeding? Is it from contempt for the law and the rights of others to a safe roadway or is it from the fact that you were just struck by a nasty case of food poisoning? Is it that you pay little or no attention while driving or because you are, precisely, paying attention and you see that the majority of drivers, including large trucks are going quite a bit faster than the posted signs and that you are becoming a hazard? The negative attitude about your speed could shift the immortality of the instance of speeding over into the mortal sin category.
To conclude, here some Sammy Hagar from that mostly awful decade of the 1980’s. Just to make a point, the subject in the lyrics is clearly committing mortal sins.
In chessy news… HERE
